


Up With The Sun

by Lokesenna



Category: British Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Mythology, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Deathfic, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-10
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-08 02:26:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/755919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokesenna/pseuds/Lokesenna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you do when the love of your life dies and there is nothing left for you to hold on to your sanity?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up With The Sun

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  You wanted to get somewhere so badly,  
> You had to lose yourself along the way.  
> You change a name but that's okay,  
> It's necessary...  
> And what you leave behind, you don't miss anyway.
> 
> You're taking steps that make you feel dizzy,  
> Then you get to like the way it feels.  
> You hurt yourself, you hurt your lover,  
> Then you discover...  
> What you thought was freedom is just greed. 
> 
> Goodbye...  
> No emotional good night...  
> I'll be up with the sun,  
> Are you still holding on?  
> I'm not coming down.
> 
> PS: You are welcome.

Thor has one arm and Baldur the other and Loki is slung low between them when they burst into the Bifröst Observatory into the expected bristle of raised and ready weaponry, the sea of implacable warrior faces.

Loki is low and slipping lower, head listing and lolling against Baldur's shoulder, then his bicep, when Thor lifts his hand free from supporting into frantic-gesture space:

"Stand down!" Thor yells, and his voice is like the ice of Jötunheimr that's already climbing up the joints of Tom's spine as he follows them.

They do, automatically, at the undeniable strength of command in Thor's call; his gesture is entirely superfluous.

Thor keeps on yelling, pointing, hastening: yelling for the healers, yelling orders at the guards, who swarm to take their place once they had gotten Loki down the ramp, yelling crisp instructions at the milling muttering warriors.

There is no need to yell "man down" though.

Everyone is watching it. _Everyone_.

Baldur, levering Loki slowly down, down, and then Tom is there, cupping his hand around the back of Loki's neck to keep it elevated. Tom, kneeling next to Loki on the floor. Tom revealing the soaking, spreading red on his white and gold tunic where Loki had leaned earlier.

Thor is still yelling, and Tom thinks maybe it's a preventative measure – just satisfyingly loud enough to keep himself from screaming.

No need to yell "the Prince is down" to specify, either, and he doesn't look at Loki: now he's yelling at the three - _three?_  - sets of healers sprinting straight for them.

Thor never said "Prince down," but Asgard is turning itself inside out like a kicked beehive, warriors and guards buzzing and boiling up out of nowhere, angry bees with swords and staffs, and there's suddenly enough gold, silver and brass in the crowd around Loki and Tom to rival the London Philharmonic.

Shots follow them through...

Not bullets, though – too Midgardian for this sort of warfare – not magic blasts like Asgard would use, or laser beams from Star Wars or, or, or grenades or rocks or rockets, no… but large heavy spheres of fire, round and hot and shiny.

One lodges in the round side of the Observatory, and Tom doesn't turn to see it, but he thinks he can hear – he can't forget.

He won't ever, _ever_ forget.

The sound the thing makes on impact is  _fwwack_ , introducing itself with a noise like something out of a comic book, one of many Marvel comics he had read, when the flames split apart and shoot its spikes, fire rods piercing and ripping into gold, hotter than the sun before it all turns black, solid.

A murmur of exclamation, then, rising slowly to a frenzy of anger and confusion. Why is the Bridge still working? Why had no one stopped the connection? And then he sees it, one of the spheres melted around Hǫfuð’s base, keeping the Bifröst portal open, Heimdall unable to pull the sword out, roaring as he tries.

Thor is swinging his hammer, pushing warriors out of the way with a broad hand, knocking them free from the line of fire, smashing fiery spheres from the air with Mjölnir.

Loki would make a jest about how he should never attempt a Dragon hunt with those skills.

But Loki is breathing. Only breathing, working so damn hard at just that, and Tom thinks that maybe for the first time there isn't breath enough for snark. Tom thinks that; but he can't think too much  _about_  that, so he just holds on, keeping Loki's neck up and elevated, cradling Loki's head between his hands, raven strands tangled around his fingers.

They let him do that much, at least… there isn't anything else he can do. The only reason he’d been allowed to come with was because this had been supposed to be an attempt at a peace treaty – and he was, Loki aside, one of the best at mediating, human or not.

_No other way to touch my Loki._

Loki opens his eyes, and Tom looks down at him, forcing his hands not to shake with everything that he is.

"Close the gateway! Stop the Bifröst now, _damn it_!" Thor, shouting again, that same irrefutable command in his voice, and irrefutable, reckless despair. Tom has never heard him use a curse so publicly, so wounded, and that tells him things he does not wish to know, it reinforces things he has been telling himself to ignore.

Finally, Heimdall, with the help of Volstagg, pulls Hǫfuð up and the Bifröst beam spirals back, spirals up, up, up until it falls silent and in the sudden, unexpected, eerie silence that follows when dozens of eyes are drawn to it, caught by motion, Tom tries not to think, tries to switch off – but fails.

There are five or more healers working on Loki now; Tom doesn't know, can't really count, doesn't know if he knows them, doesn't know if he can understand what they're saying.

Loki's eyes are open.

So is his chest.

The fiery sphere had buried itself deep on impact, pushing Loki down and the wind out of him. He'd made a pained-sounding "Oof," falling just as Tom turned to see. But sat up right away, dazed; he had waved Thor, who had started to sprint towards them, back to his impromptu battle-station.

Tom saw Baldur see Loki go down; he didn’t turn or move towards them, but a muscle twitched in his jaw, something intense changed in the way his shoulders were set, and now, when he swung his sword of light, the advancing Jötnar of Múspell did not move again after they hit the ground. Loki had never gotten along with Baldur, the jealousy too great, their differences too big... he had gotten along just that bit better with Thor, but they were all still siblings, if not by blood, then by bond.

They were still family.

"Damn," Loki had said, making it sound more like a gripe than a gasp, had held out a hand to be helped up. "Thomas-"

And Tom had fitted his hand to Loki's, gotten a good grip on his wrist; the impact had been blunt, hot, and looked painful, but Loki was just gritting his teeth like he'd received a particularly nasty paper-cut, his strength holding, added to Tom's, and they were pulling him up together...

_Fwwack._

Spikes, burning hot flames twisting and turning solid, black… things splitting in half.

Loki's chest gapes open now where the healers have cut away his leather garments, have removed the bits and shards of pierced armour and Tom knows if he would turn (he doesn't), he would see right down to his spinal cord.

More blood than Tom's ever seen, even in the movies, even _props_ , and he’s acted in a couple of battles. More blood than Tom would have ever thought possible. Loki's blood. _His_ Loki’s blood. Immortal blood. Impossible...

The healers are working, whispering, prodding, dozens of flying frantic fingers _over, on, in_  his Loki.

Loki doesn't watch them.

Loki looks at Thor instead, Thor pacing past the clump of them with the ill-contained fury of a caged animal, turning at the wall to stride back, pivoting again on his heel as if movement alone were some sort of curative for the helplessness of the almighty god of thunder.

He stops, however, when he feels his brother's eyes on him.

Loki smiles... and Thor bows.

There is over a millennium’s worth of shared experience, jealousy, of hatred, of love, of obedience and disobedience, of sentiment and of sorrow… and of understanding… in the duck of Thor's head to Loki. Never before has Tom seen Thor bow with such reverence and grace, with such unhindered regard and respect.

The actor doesn't watch him straighten up because he's followed Loki's eyes to Baldur now, Baldur who is trying to stay composed, but failing. He has his back to them, maybe on purpose, Tom thinks it's easier that way, much easier, but Fandral is there and reaches out for Baldur, touches his shoulder gently and turns him around.

Because Loki's looking at Baldur, and everyone who's not looking at Loki is watching him now, too.

Loki smiles again, and oh… it almost makes it up to his eyes.

There's a grimace of pain twitching through the god’s neck, attempting to seize along his cheek, but Tom is the only one who sees it, feels it jump under his fingertips. Loki keeps his smile pain-free for the younger Prince, and Baldur is trying hard not to exclaim: Tom sees his teeth bite hard into his bottom lip, sees how much he wants to turn away, or run from them.

So much for their constant rivalry. Baldur and Loki, Thor and Loki, Thor and Baldur… in the end there is love, love and comradeship.

Baldur nods - his very best Prince-Baldur-I-Am nod, the nod that had always stood as shorthand between them, because words would be too telling. Stood for acknowledgement and agreement, his intrinsic acceptance of Loki's ability, of Loki’s magicks, of Loki's smartness and Loki's crazy ideas and Loki's mischief and Loki's rage and Loki.

Baldur's nod that says  _brother._

And Tom feels the prick of too many eyes on the back of his neck then, in the aftermath of that nod because Loki is looking at him, saving the best for last.

Loki's head is heavy and getting heavier in Tom's hands, and he moves his lips a little bit, like the raven is trying to say something, or perhaps just draw more air into his one lung that has not collapsed. Blood shows at the corners of his lips, and Tom doesn't look at how the healers have slowed - still working, still attempting their magic, but now with the lidded eyes and severed momentum of a battalion forced into retreat.

Tom doesn't look at them, because he doesn't need to see them to know that they know what he's known since he heard that  _fwwack_ and saw the first shock of it on his Loki's face.

It's a lot more important to look at Loki now, to meet the raven haired god’s gaze on him, though it's the hardest thing that Tom's ever done in a life where things have never, never been easy.

Tom looks at Loki, leans in close when Loki's lips move again, and Loki says, barely audible whisper, "... I... would... have... I..."

The blood on his mouth ribbons down over his chin, his neck. Tom feels his fingers tighten, feels himself gripping hard, holding gently, caressing tenderly, memorizing the curve of his head, the soft clean tickle of Loki's raven strands. There is no blood in Loki's hair, maybe the only place left where there isn't any blood: just black, flowing locks wrapping around his fingers as if they are trying to hold on where Loki cannot.

The trickster god's emerald hues are on him, but Tom doesn't know if Loki's even seeing him now, if he can even hear and understand anything, if it means anything at all when Tom's head tilts lower and he tells Loki, quietly, _finally_ , that he loves him... and Tom can hardly understand it himself; hadn't known that he was going to whisper it at all, he had not known what he was going to say until he had said it, and then he wants to say it another time, perhaps shout it this time, repeat it like a mantra.

Tom doesn't know if the healer has heard him or if she hasn't, and he doesn't think it's possible or human or sane to care any less about anyone else than he does now.

Because Loki's eyes are going unfocused.

They wander the arc of Tom's crouched spine, the bright, messy, golden curls that he could never tame, Tom's arm where the muscle strains and reaches behind Loki's head… and then they look through Tom, past him…

“Loki, darling... my Peach...  _please...,_ ” emerald eyes flicker at that and Loki looks at his face again, meets Tom's open, broken, tear glazed stare, and Tom can see that he sees.

"Glenchanaic~," Loki says, smile loving, gentle... and dies.

*

Tom's lost track of days.

He notices the passing of them sometimes only by landmarks: indentations and interruptions in the quest that lets him wake up in the morning and gets him through the nights.

Days, trivial, moving past; days named for gods he never thought he would meet, coming, going, inconsequential.

He knows that Loki died on Saturday, that he spent Sunday sitting with Loki’s family and attended council meetings and later sat in Loki’s room, for a while, staring at the wall until someone takes him to the healing chambers, and later someone else brings him back. Here. Home.

He knows that on Sunday Thor and Baldur, the Lady Sif and the Warriors Three led several warriors back to Múspellsheimr, a retaliation that normally would have been protested by Odin's diplomacy, not revenge, but even the All-Father was grieving, trying to keep the Queen together, trying to make Frigga not hurt. Tom would have gone with Thor… only Tom is in Loki’s… chambers, staring at the wall.

Another someone gives him the news, when word finally came that Thor and the rest had returned.

He knows that Loki was buried on Monday, in a flourish of gold and flowers and salutes and warriors and crowds and Asgardian fanfare. He knows that he felt his fingers twitch when they handed Frigga Loki’s sceptre, but he doesn't remember much else: only that Frigga had looked at him with eyes that suggested maybe she understood, felt for him, and that she shook her head no, and did not know what " Glenchanaic" was, either. Frigga, who could see the future and could never speak of it. She did not know.

None of them did.

Tom knows that he spent some day, Tuesday, maybe Wednesday, alert and fixated and caffeinated (Norns he had made certain there was enough of that here) and working in the library, where he could stare at books and not the wall. That he spent thirty-six hours awake and scribbling in a notebook, trying possible anagram out of the word Loki had given him with every variation in spelling, and later trying the same in six other languages, just to make certain.

Thirty-six hours were heading into forty when he drifted off over a thick text of Norse mythology, and it was Thursday (the computer said) when he finally returned to Midgard and tried the Internet.

Tom had wanted to figure it out alone, wanted to unravel Loki’s last idea by himself.

He liked to believe, think, that it had been meant for him.

But it was more important that he could find out, and he was a fool to ignore technology, to further spurn any help (Thor had tried, the Norns knew he'd tried) with this all-consuming, ridiculous obsession.

Ridiculous, because it could all be nonsense, gibberish from Loki's dying tongue, a mistake, misheard, perhaps imagined, even. Consuming, because it's the only thing that makes Tom feel like continuing to exist on even a semi-regular basis, the only thing that keeps him focused and moving. The only thing that actually lets him sort of think about Loki but not really  _about_  him, lets him think about everything, about how the his grief is so raw and extraordinary that Tom would marvel at its display in other people, but can't allow him to slow down quite enough to recognize it in himself.

It was Thursday when Tom sat blinking at the computer, and Thursday when Google told him (I'm Feeling Lucky):

Glenchanaic, _did you mean_ … Glen Cannich, Scotland.

It was on Thursday that Tom wept for the first time. The only time, really, for Loki, for what he had lost, because there is no mystery here… there is no secret, there is no message, no hidden meaning, no… only some memory of Loki's slipping through; some remembrance of a place that came to mind as he lay dying.

Tom doesn't know. But he knows it's Saturday again when he's forced to pick up the phone for the first time, because his voicemail is full.

There are many messages there, some that Tom's listened to, some that he hasn't, not yet. A few from Thor, who had long learned to use the “Phone of i” like Loki so often called it, more from his sisters, his parents, Luke. There are others, acquaintances calling with questions, friends of Tom's calling with concerns of his absence, and again, again Luke calling to make certain he hasn't gone clear off the deep end.

Tom would call back to reassure them, if he could, but he isn't so sure himself.

He picks up his phone then, though, because if it's Thor calling and he’d get the full machine, he'd be over here too soon, pounding on his door, and since Tom knows that opening the door is an impossible thing, he answers instead, after four rings.

Doesn't say anything, though. Sees no real need to say hello to anyone.

An unfamiliar voice: "Mr. Hiddleston?"

Tom opens his mouth.

Closes it. Grinds his teeth and tries to recall how to talk, how to make his voice work.

"Hello? Mr. Hiddleston? Have I reached Tom Hiddleston?"

"Y-yes." Tom's voice sounds croaky and unused, since he had not used it since he thinks maybe that Sunday, when they set Loki’s remains on fire.

"Glad to have finally gotten in touch with you, Mr. Hiddleston. Daniel Ferguson. I left a message on Friday...?"

Tom can't quite remember Friday.

"Yes."

Ferguson pauses, clears his throat. Tom waits past the static of a bad connection, hoping that maybe the connection died.

"Daniel Ferguson. I'm Logan Greene’s attorney. As I said in the message, it is imperative that I meet with you… as soon as possible, actually."

What? Logan Greene. That is Loki… Loki’s Midgardian name… an attorney? _Loki_ had an attorney? Why? He was a god, why would he have bothered with such petty Midgardian customs? He had told Tom he would try his best to settle in, to live here, with him, half of the time, and on Asgard, the other half… had he gone _this_ far?

"Y-yes?"

"In the matter of Logan Greene’s last will and testament..."

At least he hasn't said "Loki," not once. If he did, Tom thinks he might have to hang up the phone. It's selfish, maybe, petty, but Tom will have to do it anyway, because if he hears "Loki," he will have to think about Loki, _about Loki_ … and he can't really do that.

"Look," Tom interrupts, displaying a dazzling knowledge of vocabulary, oh what eloquence. "If there's something-"

Loki's things. Loki’s things from his house, things from Asgard he had taken here when he had first settled, when they had decided to take it slow, to visit one another, because getting to deep into it right from the start, no, Loki had made clear it was not wise. Not with him being immortal and Tom – the irony – being mortal, and an actor, in the spotlight. They decided to sneak around and date, just date, like _Midgardians_ do, oh, Loki had been so excited about that…

Loki's things, on walls, on shelves, in drawers.

In a box.

Loki's things, gathering dust, lying untouched and undisturbed, lying quiet in his house. Loki's door, unopened; Loki's shower head, rusting; Loki's bed, sheets tucked in tight, never to be pulled down again.

Loki. Loki Loki Loki Loki Loki.

_Loki._

Tom grips the phone until it hurts his hand, his ear and finishes: "If there is something, anything for me, please... simply... box it up..." ouw, ouw, the phone is hurting him- “...and send it to my home-"

"I'm afraid it's not quite that simple. My sympathies for your loss, Mr. Hiddleston, but-"

"Yes." Tom is barely managing even with the monosyllables now. Such a bloody stupid idea to pick it up, when he knows that all every damn person will be talking about is Loki, Loki being dead, how extremely and exceedingly and very very dead Loki is, forcing, repeating, drumming into Tom that  _Loki is dead_  – Loki is _dead_!

"I'm very sorry, sir. You see, Logan Greene named you executor and chief beneficiary. It is necessary that you come to my office so that we can ensure that his wishes are carried out in full. Sir."

He makes Tom's title sound almost like an accusation: waves it around in the air as though it will recall Tom to reason. To the ability to have a polite bloody phone conversation.

Tom says, "What?"

"Chief beneficiary," Ferguson says again. "And executor of his estate. I repeat that it is of the utmost necessity that you meet with me in order to review the will-"

Tom searches for words. Tom feels the edges of his phone dig into his hand where he has it curved around the phone. The blond tilts and nearly slides off of his chair and away like the rest of the room, the room which is blurry and spinning and makes little sense, like Ferguson's continuing clause-like damn commentary.

Tom fights the sudden urge to throw up but he thinks he might anyway.

And then… then he asks, finally, somehow managing to voice it, because it's the last thing that Loki gave him, though now Loki is trying to give him more.

"Does it say anything about Glen Cannich?" 

*

Daniel Ferguson is tall with broad shoulders, silver-grey hair and quick keen eyes behind glasses much smaller than Tom has back home.

Everything Ferguson does is brisk and professional, and his environment reflects that, the polite pretty secretary at her desk out past the door, the large, well-appointed office in London, with its leather chairs and shelves lined with impressive, unused law books.

Tom looks at the framed pictures on Ferguson's desk when he's asked to sit down, and he looks at the neatly hung certificates and commendations on the wall when Ferguson takes the seat across the desk and launches into a lengthy speech in legalese, which is one language that Tom never studied, or cared to.

He could understand it, he knows, if he were listening.

In the window over Ferguson's shoulder, the sun is coming up on early spring, he looks away, at an oil painting that pretends to be expensive but isn't worth the frame that holds it up, not with those irregular brushstrokes and imperfect lines.

Tom signs some papers, and then he signs some more.

He says, in order, "Uh-huh," and "yes," and "okay," and "right," and "I know," though he doesn't, not really.

Ferguson finally pushes the will across the desk, and it's thick, dense with unnecessary wording and stipulations and regulations, and Tom signs something else, and then he reads it.

He wades through twisting and long paragraphs, the difficult phrasing, the whole too-formal jumbled mess of it, only because it's what he's trained to do best, because this is how scripts were wrapped to weed out those who weren’t worth the trouble.

It's what he does. Makes simple sense out of complexity, like Shakespeare, deciphers the impenetrable; reveals the buried secrets of the writer’s mind. Instinctually, Tom interprets what's being revealed to him, now that his own mind has come to a sudden crashing stop and lets him think – at least to some extend.

There are pages, a whole lot of them, but only a couple of things are actually important. Tom draws them from the phrases quagmire but he keeps his head down, eyes moving left to right like he is reading long after he is done – acting easily – so that Ferguson will remain quiet.

Loki had jested, once or twice or fifty, about his infamous ability to dodge checks and tabs, and apparently (Tom sees many names – how had Loki remembered them all? Swift glances at name-tags, hastily called names) he had always intended to pay up eventually.

He would almost smile that Loki took the care to pay them all back posthumously. Maybe he would smile if this were someone else's will, anyone else’s.

A few more sums; gifts-in-kind to a handful of institutions, a couple of good causes that Tom had mentioned to him over the years.

Loki left Baldur and Thor his daggers and assorted weapons. For Frigga, there are some works of art he had once bought with Tom on a trip around Europe.

Everything else is Tom's.

Everything.

The deed to Loki's house. Loki's car that they had bought and he had never driven – except for that one time Tom had tried to teach him and the god had almost driven over a dog. The bottles of good Asgardian wine in their cases in Loki's closet. Loki's clothes and shoes and that coffeemaker that Tom had made him addicted to, Loki's couches and chairs and silverware. Loki's clothes, Loki’s scarves, Loki's cups and saucers and Loki's bed and pillows and quilts, Loki’s books – so, so many books… and Loki's money.

A lot of it.

The numbers blur into Rorschach blots across the page when he scrubs a hand over his eyes. There's money enough to force Tom into a sharp intake of breath – and he’s not poor, he’s earned figures he’d never dreamt of as a child.

It can't be right, and he says so.

Ferguson blinks across the desk. "I assure you, Mr. Hiddleston, that everything is very much in order."

Tom shakes his head. "But I can't possibly accept it all. It can't be correct -"

Ferguson thumbs through a heavy folder, eyebrows raised. "If I understand Mr. Greene’s intentions correctly, and I did know Loki, this, all of this as you see it… it is all meant to go to you."

_‘And I did know Loki.’_

_Loki._

Tom closes his eyes for a long moment.

The blond is not dizzy; he can do this. Loki had thought he could, and that is incentive enough.

"These numbers… they’re much too high," Tom speaks, carefully.

High like a professor's wet dream; high enough to fund researches with, to be able to make a difference with his ideas and develop his theories and test his hypotheses; high enough to get Tom all the resources he could hope for to _help_. Help where help is needed.

Ferguson takes out a second copy of the will and adds a slim stack of manila files with papers and forms showing thick at the edges: Loki's life on Earth in folders. "Logan Greene bought and sold several properties, and the profits were significant. He seemed to know exactly where to invest his money. Some properties are still retained. The house is valuable, the car is new-" he pushes the lot of it across the desk.

Tom swallows, "I just don't think that I can..."

Too much money, much too much, more than Loki's thieving habits had ever suggested to Tom. Granted… he was a Prince, he’d had gold, a _lot_ of it, and perhaps other things, too. Diamonds, who knows… but he’d never, _never_ noticed.

"Look, Mr. Hiddleston." Ferguson leans forward on his elbows. "What you choose to do with Logan Greene’s estate is up to you. If you wish to give it all to charity, you can… once it has all been signed over in your name. I sat across this desk from Loki three years ago when he chose to make his will, and he told me he had the utmost confidence in naming you beneficiary. He reconfirmed that this year when he returned and added newer valuables to the list. It has only ever been you."

But then it's there.

Tom had wondered when it would be. Showing only a little in Ferguson's eyes, just the slightest shift of his expression because he is a professional and Tom doesn't think that Ferguson really wants to know but he just can't stop himself from really thinking it; the question he could ask if he were less of a professional, because Loki is dead, and the will is legal, and Tom is a pale-faced actor without even a proper handshake who has been given everything.

_Across from Loki three years ago._

Three years… that was when they had made things official to friends and family… after their first time.

"Glen Cannich," Tom says then, taking up the folders full of Loki, and not up to meet the question. Wishes, almost, that there was actually something to explain  _this_ , that wouldn’t make him sound like a crazy person. "You said there was something-"

"Scotland." Ferguson looks at him sideways, nods at the will and the papers. "One property there. A couple of acres..." He frowns. "Hasn't increased in value since his time of purchase, however. You would probably be better off selling it."

"Thank you," Tom says, and stands, and wants to be gone from here.

Ferguson lets him go, though he pauses next to Tom at the door. The blond tucks the papers close inside his coat and shakes his hand.

"He was very sure, Mr. Hiddleston," Ferguson says.

Tom nods, because he thinks he's supposed to, and sees himself out. 

*

It takes another week before Thor shows up at his doorstep, sorrow in his eyes, but his jaw set in determination. It is on the day that Tom had decided to make it up to Glen Cannich, to check out for himself what it is that Loki had there, enough things packed into his car to last him for weeks.

Tom invites the thunderer in, once inside they stand merely stand for a moment, neither of them knowing how to start this conversation. Eventually, Thor does.

"You are well?" The thunderer asks, after a few beats.

"Well enough to travel," Tom says, which isn't really saying much.

Thor grunts, "It is my opinion that Loki would not have wished to see you in this state… not on his account. I do not think that he would be happy with that, Thomas."

 _Thomas._ Don’t. Don’t. Loki called him that. Just don’t.

"Yeah, Thor." Tom, eyes down, tries to stop his jaw from seizing up. He doesn't have to look up to know that Thor gaze hasn't wavered from his face. "I believe you're right."

But Loki had wanted  _something_  for him. He had given him a word. Loki had given him enough to get Tom out of the house and into action again… even into interaction.

Thor helps Tom move his suitcase down and into his trunk, and when he reaches for the car door, the thunderer’s grip is firm and warm and reassuring on his wrist. "Thomas Hiddleston. I wish you success."

Tom doesn't know what, exactly, he's going to succeed at; doesn't know what, he's doing in the first place, but he returns pressure in kind to Thor's bulky arm and looks once at his light cerulean eyes before embarking on his journey. 

*

Tom drives without music, because music could just trigger memories, and he isn’t quite ready for those yet. Instead he watches the countryside go past, and the malls, and the lakes and the signs. He watches the sky go darker, as though the notice that it's spring had been posted late.

The drive takes him over hills and receding trees to Glen Cannich, and Tom turns into the main street, nervous fingers trembling around the steering wheel. He stops the car at the side of the road and gets out, walking into town on foot, with just a bag of essentials slung around his shoulder… he had always preferred it this way, to walk, to run places.

It's well past ten and the shops are shut up for the night. Tom spies an Indian place open across the street, and the diner and the pub look like they are still going strong.

Tom shakes his head and walks on past the dark store faces.

Glen Cannich.

He hadn't known what to expect; had attempted his hardest, not to expect anything at all.

The pavement is old but kept clean, and there are trees lining the streets, twisted and old but still alive and strong. A hardware store, a grocery store, a bookstore… no, two; side-by-side, and Tom nearly smiles at the literary collaboration; there’s a pizzeria. It's a small town, hardly that – maybe a big village, quiet, ordinary and uneventful.

Tom turns the corner onto Merlyn Lane, spotting his Bed & Breakfast across the way from a school, heavy with redbrick and a playground with a big yard.

Glen Cannich.

He hadn't thought, not really, that anything would really happen; there hardly could have been a parade waiting his arrival. Nobody knows him here, he thinks, nobody knows he is coming or cares what he does for a living, it is often like that in little places, it is why he loves coming here, go hiking, be free. Tom had seen nothing extraordinary, felt nothing in the calm streets. Nothing.

So damn naïve, to have thought to find something of Loki here. Loki…

_Loki, who would stride down main street in Glen Cannich and sling his arm around Tom's shoulder when he found him, and apologize for pretending to be dead; and agree that it had been a bad prank, one of his worst yet, and it would have been okay, and Tom would have forgiven him, and gone with him, because Loki's arm would have been slung around his shoulder and everything would be fine._

At the Bed & Breakfast Tom is met by an older woman with an outdated haircut and a lively brogue inflection of "ays," who shows him to a little room upstairs with striped wallpaper and framed pictures of wolves on the walls. His heart aches at the sight, memories wanting to return, memories of Loki transforming in the snow, black fur and eyes lively and green… she lingers at his door long enough that Tom finally has to force a smile to make her go away.

Tom gets his car and parks in his assigned parking lot, then drags his trunk upstairs and unpacks a little… and then he sits on the bed. He gets up, turning on the television for some background noise, to feel less alone, to feel comfort. It doesn’t work… he pours himself a cup of water from the pitcher on the table and looks in his folder. Restless. _So restless._

The blond puts on sweatpants, turns the TV up and then off, and reads a chapter about Scotland wildlife out of a book provided by the Bed & Breakfast.

Then Tom thinks;  _well, Loki, I'm here…_ and then he tries his best not to think about anything at all. 

*

That night, in Glen Cannich, Tom's dreams are full of Loki.

Loki looks good, in heavy leathers and bright greens and polished armour, and his hair raven and shiny. He looks younger, somehow, and he smiles when Tom catches sight of him.

In the dream, Tom goes to the trickster god. Loki puts his hands on Tom's shoulders, and Tom will swear that he could feel their cool warmth – so unique for Loki – and solidity until the day he dies.

"I wanted to tell you," Loki says, and his eyes are almost soft, as unguarded as Tom's ever seen them.

Tom grasps on to that like a life line, "What? Peach, what is it?"

But Loki has already begun to fade at the edges, bleeding colour like an old photograph, and Tom feels his mind ready to shift into other dreaming. No, no, no. _No._

He tries to hold onto Loki; leans in close to him, whispering desperately, "Loki. Darling, do you really have to go?"

And he closes his mouth, and doesn't  _say_  anything else; just fixes his mind on dreaming there, using the anchor of Loki… and since it's Tom's dream, Loki gets back his colour, and stays. 

*

Daytime in Glen Cannich is an entirely different affair. The sun is up and a healthy array of farmers have taken to the streets, and Tom wakes to the sound of children running past the Bed & Breakfast. He takes his time getting out of bed, coming out of that dream.

Outside on the town’s main street, there actually more little shops than Tom had thought the night before.

The crowd’s mixed, but the majority seem of strong Scottish stock, with blond or ginger Celtic roots or Viking shoulders.

Tom tries to move down the street like he belongs there and he’s getting good at it, when he comes to an intersection he even smiles. Then he laughs for what he thinks is maybe the first time since Loki died because on the other side of the intersection, three coffee shops straddle the street, facing each other off like some warring triumvirate.

Tom stands and grins at the embarrassment of those riches. Where to go, oh dear, where to go? The safe generic Glendale Coffee Shop, looking like a bad example of an alpine lodge - or - the little Mum’n’Dad’s with the glazed pastries behind the counter - or - startled in spite of his already startlingly grin-y face, Tom heads across the street towards the shop that announces its name,  _The Dark Wolf Cafe,_  in large letters and a rainbow banner across one side of its glass front. _Oh_.

Inside, there are big, leather armchairs next to small tables. Boys sit with boys, girls with girls, and all are laughing and talking over notebooks, open laptops and older students are reading newspapers, and an older man is smoking a cigarette in the back, because who can regulate things here, here, in wild old Scotland… and coffee, a lot of coffee.

Tom likes it here immediately.

The boy who takes his order has two piercings and a tattoo showing where his shirt doesn't quite meet his hip. He has spiky black dyed hair, and he maintains four conversations while he collects cup and milk and coffee, still moving, just slightly, to the heartfelt post-rock wafting from the stereo. Tom closes his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath. His music, _their_ music… the only music of Tom’s they listened to that Loki had openly loved.

He looks up, needing to move quick, when the kid drops off his coffee. His eyes are grey, and curious.

Tom asks, "University near here?"

He gives Tom a look, blinking, but his Scottish charm sets back in and he nods. "Aye. Well, I mean, it's just Mackay College, pretty small."

"Yeah," Tom nods, and takes his cup, giving it a precursory stir because such is the next step in proper coffee or tea drinking etiquette. "Is it in walking distance?"

Now the boy smiles, a cool little smile. "Sure, it’s right down the road. You can find campus about a mile past the end of the main road. Just follow the signs.”

Tom smiles at him, because it feels good to try that again. The actor takes his coffee and sits in a seat near the window.

He watches people pass on the small street into the tinier ones, and he tries hard not to move his foot to the post-rock infectiousness, tries hard not to think about it at all. He watches the students at the other tables studying and chatting and flirting, and then he returns to the counter to get himself a carryout cup.

The boy helps him make the transfer, and his grey eyes are back before Tom can turn to go, knowing the boy probably recognizes him, but he is polite and merely says: "If you make it out to the college, you should go and try to see Angus."

"See Angus," Tom repeats with a nod. "Got it."

He doesn't, quite, have it, but he navigates tables and book-piles and leaves the cafe anyway, down main street, where main street becomes another street, and then that street becomes a little sliver of high way. It's getting blessedly warmer, and Tom pulls off his black cardigan and wraps it around his waist. The coffee only makes it a little further, but the caffeine accompanies Tom all the way to Mackay College. 

*

The college occupies six by twelve blocks on the outskirts of Glen Cannich. There are a lot of trees, a well-tended lawn has a head start on spring, Scottish green, lively and full. The buildings are spread out and are of old, old brick, dark and Gothic and nice. A couple of architectural misfires from the seventies make Tom's eyes itch; but it's not as though he needs to look at one thing for long because everyone seems to be engaging in some kind of Bacchanalic re-enactment. Because Tom thinks he's never seen so many people outside all at once, or so glad that it is Tuesday.

Everywhere, students are lying in the grass or sitting together in groups and playing games, and sipping from bottles. There is a range of equipment, laptops, iPhones, Blackberries and two guys with Hurling sticks edging onto the Rugby pitch.

Everyone looks fantastically beautiful, Tom decides then, because beyond the technicalities of beauty everyone here is full of colour and purpose, wearing bright splashes of clothing that the previous months had kept covered up by coats.

Even the students making annoyed faces at their study material are still stretched out like lazy cats in the sun; and Tom crosses into the gateless campus, thinking that he must be pale: how pale he must look after weeks shut-up inside, white skin seeming even paler against a black v-neck.

It had felt appropriate, the mourning-wear, but as Tom goes up the path, he can't stop looking at these bright kids in their bright clothes, and he wonders if maybe Loki would've approved more of Tom wearing something else… the white and blue v-neck he so favoured, maybe, or his red-and-blue plaid shirt, the only thing that had stripes that the raven ever approved of.

 _Loki would say that Tom was pasty enough without all this black, already._ Not nearly as pale as Loki, though… but somehow the raven had always pulled it off perfectly.

Tom wanders. It's always been one of his soundest skills and he observes the attitudes and outfits, the outdoor fitness class in one corner of the field, with a curiosity and interest he has not felt in quite a while.

Had Loki ever been out to visit here himself? What would he have thought of this little throwback haven to whatever-this-is? Tom is willing to bet that the school has more than its fair share of acronymn clubs, but that the Shakespeare Society most certainly isn't one of them.

_Imbeciles, Loki would say if they visited here together, and he would roll his eyes, and then smirk a little when Tom frowned. Guess they balance things out, he'd say, and fall silent with the patience of one who had lived for centuries, until Tom was done looking._

There's still too much activity for a Tuesday, Tom thinks, and Tom has never been good at not being nosy. He finally stops someone, and asks, trusting in Scottish charm.

He gets a sandy-haired stoner with a football under one arm and gets him to pause before he can reach his knot of friends behind Tom.

"Is there some an event on today?" Tom asks, and kind of shrugs at the air around him.

Sandy sizes him up, trying to decide if Tom's being facetious, trying to decide if Tom's maybe a professor (he's been told he's got the look) and whether he should make an attempt to hide the joint neatly tucked behind his ear.

But finally he grins. "Spring in Scotland, man," he says. "Take a nap and you'll miss it. You have to make the most of it."

He's gone before Tom has time to think of something to say in response, which is okay, because even though he's gotten better at the exchanging-human-interaction-thing since last week, he has a long way to go until he's good at it again.

Over the next half hour, Tom joins in on a tour (he sneakily tags along) learns a lot about the Scottish High Kings, and he hears about small classes and gets to stop in on a lecture and wishes that they'd stayed longer in the library, where he saw a room with rare books but no immediate means of accessing it.

When the tour is over he asks a question, though he thinks he already sort of might know the answer.

"Our literature department?" the guide echoes, grinning broadly. "One of the best in Britain, sir. Of course, we can't really compete with Cambridge or Oxford but they don’t have our professors… we like to think that no student is just a number at Mackay College."

"I like that," Tom says, quietly, and she looks pleased. She offers to show him the way back to the library after the tour is over, and he accepts.

Tom tries not to think about how much the students at Mackay College would appreciate a class on Asgard and /real/ ‘aliens’. He would probably have to put a cap on it. "I was told to see Angus if I came here… how?"

She blinks and smiles. "That's our astronomy hall." She points at a round brick building across the quad, so similar to Asgard’s Observatory that he swallows. "We’ve got a pretty good telescope."

They come up on the library; Tom extends his hand, a little awkwardly, but she shakes with tour-guide grace.

She looks at Tom for a moment, and then she asks, "Do you think your child will apply to Mackay?"

Tom's turn to blink. _Sleipnir, Fenrir_. They were no orphans, not as long as Tom was around.

He says, "They would but I'm not sure they have the right… um… credentials."

"Well." She grins. "Your children should give it a shot, anyway. We're, you know, non-traditional here."

"Yes," Tom says. _Not non-traditional enough_. "Thank you."

She smiles again when they are at the library and leaves him there, where Tom spends too long propped up against too many shelves, and skims too many books he'd really  read.

He stays there until dark; but before he leaves, he goes into Angus Hall to look at the stars.  _Loki_ …

*

That night, in dreams, Loki has his arm around Tom's shoulder. "Leaving so soon?"

"Yeah," Tom answers. In the dream, he turns in to meet Loki's touch, Loki's eyes. "I have to, don't I? If I don’t, I won't be able to leave… at all."

"I know," says Loki, emerald eyes soft as he nods. “It would have been a perfect place.”

Perfect. Perfect for what? Hmm…

"I'm figuring it out, Loki," Tom says. "I think I am."

"You are," Loki nuzzles his temple then, reassuring, familiar. "I am so sorry."

*

Joey Butler is young, slim, ginger, and attractive, with a clean sweater and slacks and blue eyes in a round open face.

They exchange pleasantries over coffee mugs, and then Tom sits across a long desk again. Butler reads the papers that he passes over. Tom peels buttery flakes from a bite-sized croissant.

"Everything seems to be in order," he says after a while and Tom admires his thorough, cautious reading. He makes a few scrawls on some pages with a black pen. "It'll take a few weeks before the land-deed will legally be in your name; but if you're certain about finding a new buyer we can begin the process soon."

"Thank you." Tom nods. He watches Butler' hands work the pen. He doesn't look up, but he can feel the realtor's gaze on him, an earnest gaze to match an earnest tone as he asks what Tom can't quite bring himself to:

"Would you like to see the property, Mr. Hiddleston, before we finish this up?"

Tom's coffee is black and has ceased to be too scorching. He sips slowly and fidgets the mug into place on the small coaster. "Yes," it’s so hard to say. "I would like that very much… but I want all of the papers to be in order before I do." Butler tilts his head, and Tom can't explain, so he apologizes instead: "It's nothing against Glen Cannich, of course - it seems a truly lovely place. It just… doesn't make sense for me to hold on to a couple of acres of land across the country when I'm certain someone here would make better use of it."

"Of course," says Joey Butler. "We probably won't have to wait long for a buyer since the house is very new."

"Of course," Tom says, parroting, because he'd been looking at the loops of his signature in black ink on the papers to sell Loki's land, and parroting seemed like the easiest way to ease out of the conversation, out of the office, out and away from everything Glen Cannich was and wouldn't be.

But then Tom's mind is too quick and interferes and Tom says: "What?"

The fountain pen stops scrawling. Butler' brow draws together in confusion. "The house," Joey Butler repeats. "Is unfinished, but that shouldn't be a detriment to its sale value… there's leeway for the new owners to make changes to the original blueprint."

And Tom's mind again thinks before he can think about what he's thinking, Tom's mind thinks, ridiculously “ _the house that Loki built”_ and Butler with his clear blue eyes looks at Tom, Tom's expression looking strangely poised on the verge of laughter; looking strangely poised on the verge of terror.

"The house that Logan Greene has been building for the last year and a half..." He almost falters at the sudden blankness in Tom's eyes, seeing incomprehension where Tom, silently, is comprehending _too much_. "...surely Mr. Greene mentioned..."

"No," Tom says. "No, he didn't."  _Oh God, Loki, oh God. It isn't possible, it can't be possible._

"I thought that the wording in the deed implied a shed or a dock or some small structure - I didn't think about it, really, Loga- Lo, no, he never - the lawyer, Ferguson, he didn't say anything about a-" Tom is babbling and it's unbecoming, definitely unprofessional, he thinks, but Joey Butler has a soft round sympathetic face, and Loki had built a house in Scotland, all by himself. Had been building it for a long time… for _them_.

"Ah." Butler, suddenly, astonishingly, looks a bit sheepish. "I apologize. I thought that you knew. Being, ah, Mr. Greene’s beneficiary, and - we're not really supposed to, of course, but Mr. Greene - he asked that we keep the house paperwork separate from the land-deed-"

The coffee is cold now in the back of Tom's throat, but it's familiar and bitter and grounding, so that when Butler pauses mid-sentence and rifles a drawer of files, Tom can swallow and his eyes can focus on a new piece of paper being pushed the length of the wide desk.

"I apologize for the confusion, Mr. Hiddleston," he says, "though I ask that you understand mine, too. I thought that you knew, that you must know. You see… this house has been in your name, always." 

*

Tom sits in the front seat of Butler' Jaguar. He doesn't look out of the window, at the passing streets, at the people or trees, the smooth road tapering out into dirt.

They've been driving for what feels like too long when Tom speaks up for the first time since back in the office. "We're pretty far from town."

"Highlands," Butler agrees, sounding grateful to fill the silence; but then he offers, "Logan Greene’s requirements were incredibly specific. I recall that he kept me driving around for hours and hours when we couldn't find the right kind of location he was looking for-"

Tom shivers then, only a little, that he and Loki would share this same car seat: with its creamy leather, next to Joey Butler, who can't help but catch the movement. His eyes are guilty at having mentioned Loki and move to Tom's turned-down face, away. The Scot’s grip on the wheel tightens nervously.

But Tom only says, "Oh?"

He wants to say something to make it all right: should say, smiling a little with memory, something about Loki being stubborn, something good-natured about the god’s infamously pernickety behaviour, something to put the poor guy at ease so he can stop looking at Tom like he's something fragile.

He says, "Oh," and Butler tries on a hasty, gentle smile, as though he understands that Tom can't quite stop being fragile.

He doesn't understand what it means, though, when the man explains to him, "It wasn’t so hard in the long run. We found a property that fit his needs perfectly: with a lake, surrounded by hills and away from everything else."

Although he feels the continuing flick of concerned glances, Tom closes his mouth around words that can't be voiced anyway and doesn't speak again for the rest of the drive. Roads curve into dirt roads, highlands grow higher, the grass is greener.

Butler makes a left, then a right and then he turns abruptly, rounding the car up into a driveway hidden in between greens, Tom looks at the tall, richly green trees fanned out along the road in a thick perimeter that blocks the land from view.

By the time they reach the house, Tom thinks that he understands.

The pieces fit neatly; it is hardly a puzzle. Loki had never been subtle.

Understanding it doesn't make any more sense though.

Letting himself understand. Letting himself believe it.

It hurts too much, believing.

_What would he have said and how could he possibly have done it?_

_Cleaning up after staying over at Loki’s small house in Hampstead, twenty minutes walk from his own flat. Tom would wash dishes with him like he always does, arms halfway soaked in bubbles and suds and Loki would have his half finished wine glass in one hand and he would lean his hip against the refrigerator and tell a story and it would end with_ _"and if you do not happen to have anything planned for the rest of your mortal life, I know a perfect little place in Scotland that I have been building for us,"_ _because he'd waited long enough and that would’ve been the perfect time._

_Just like that… it’s how he would have done it._

_"That was made juuust for us," he would say, while Tom's fingers worked with dishes and soaps and water._

_Tom would not believe him. Tom would not understand._

_Loki would have made him believe._

_Loki would explain that not long after they had been together he'd made a will and then Loki had bought land, and he'd built them a house. He would explain it like that, his illogical logic. Then Loki would tell him about Glen Cannich, about the decisions he'd made and the secrets he'd kept._

_He would say fare well to Asgard and he would be free. Free for Tom. Free from duties to a throne he does not support nor long for, free from keeping princely secrets for the realm. Free._

_Free to become mortal, mortal for Tom. His choice, only his, one that no one could ever make for him, one that Tom couldn’t talk him out of. That is how Loki worked._

_He would tell Tom that being with him had confirmed what Loki had tried too hard to deny, so he'd finally stopped trying._

_He would tell Tom that he was done taking things slow and that it was one of the hardest things he'd ever done in his centuries and centuries of living. He would look mischievous as he apologized, as close as Loki got to apology anyway, for thinking up so certain a life for them, for thinking he could be certain of Tom. It was selfish of him. He was sorry – but not really. He wanted Tom to see the house. Felt the blond would understand it then. He would tell Tom about the plans he'd drawn up, the place he had searched for and the house he had made for them, the outlet Glen Cannich had been, just knowing it was there, knowing that he could hope for the future when the present was at its worst, when he was drawn into wars he did not want to fight any longer, when he was forced to support a King he did not believe in when all he wanted was to get away, get away with Tom and live in peace._

_Loki would be unsure. Loki was never unsure, but he would stand and watch Tom who had his head tipped down over the sink, the steaming water, the bubbles. Watch Tom breathe silent and frozen, hands aquatic… and it would take Tom a long time to understand, even longer to believe the raven, to grasp just what it meant. But it wouldn’t take him long at all to answer._

_"Well," Tom would have said, finally, turning into Loki's gaze, eyes sparkling with all the things he would tell him, all the ‘I love you’s’ they had always stopped short of saying out loud. "I suppose this means I'll be needing a warmer jacket?"_

Joey Butler parks the car where the driveway slopes up to the house.

Tom sees it then: wood, everywhere, wood.

A luxurious sprawl of a cabin made big and long and updated into a house. A cabin that is wide rather than tall, everything on a level, with long windows cut into the wood. A porch with unfinished deck and loose banister spokes overlooks the lake. The lake is still clinging to ice, but it has a dock and oh… oh this brings up such memories, beautiful memories of their first time, when Loki had taken him to a cabin so similar to this one but smaller, so much smaller, and there had been snow everywhere, but the lake… the _lake_ …

Butler coughs politely by Tom's elbow. "You can go up whenever you like," he says. "I have to take some measurements on the grounds. It's no problem to wait."

"Thank you," Tom tells him, meaning it. "And you will do as I asked earlier?"

"I will, Mr. Hiddleston," Butler says, "but it really is a beautiful house. I'm glad that you wanted to see it. Mr. Greene worked extensively with the builders here… and I'm told it wasn’t an easy task."

"Ah." Tom finds himself smiling. "I take it he was fighting them every step of the way, called them imbeciles and yet astonished them with a constant influx of ideas?"

Butler blinks. Lets himself share in the smile. "Yes… and he seemed satisfied with the developments as of late." He has his tape measure out then, and a clipboard, and there is a pen tucked behind his ear, looking primed for action. Tom nods and smiles (it seems to set people more at ease these days), then turns. The road slants up a little, to where the house is inclined on the hill. Tom uses the key Butler gave him to let himself in. Alone.

The door closes gently and the house settles still and quiet around him. There is a strong smell of paint and sawdust on the floor.

This is the house that Loki built.

_Loki._

Tom keeps the sound of the name with him as he moves up through the front hall and enters a big open room with a stone fireplace at its centre. The ceilings are higher than he would have thought from the outside, and generous skylights overhead are letting in most of the sun. This is so Loki, he thinks, but his reasoning most likely was for easy view of the stars at night.

It smooths the rougher hue of the wooden walls; the floors have been sanded but not yet polished. Tom stands in what should have been their living room and doesn't know what to do with himself.

This should not be done without Loki. This should not have been done without Loki. He shouldn't have come here. Shouldn't have come here now that he knows what Glen Cannich really meant.

Tom knows with every step forward, every new inch uncovered to his sight, how very wrong this is.

To be here without Loki is a mockery, the cruellest sort of taunt.

It's harsh and painful and mean; he would never wish this on the worst of people he has encountered. He wouldn't wish this, this injustice, this feeling on anyone or anything. He would spare them this grief.

_Why hadn't Loki spared him?_

It is too inhumane a torture to be standing here, where his future cannot be.

In the living room, Tom rages at Loki.

For the first time since Loki died Tom lets himself be truly angry. He finds that he's so, _so_ angry it's hard to breathe: the air is sweet here and smells of sawdust but he is gasping against it.

How  _dare_  Loki? How  _dare_  he have this, this bright brilliant hope, this respite of what could have been, depending on Tom, but leaving him ignorant? It is too much, it is too big of a secret, entirely too big to have been kept alone.

"Loki," Tom says. He wants to whisper but maybe he yells it. He hopes he doesn't, but his voice echoes back in the empty room. "You should have told me!"

This is so selfish of Loki. So impossibly selfish: Tom had believed him when he'd returned to Asgard, when he’d bowed to the throne and said that he could never imagine a life amongst mortals. He'd made his relationship with Tom seem like something casual and forgettable, forgettable once Tom would be dead, once he was free to move on to _immortal_ things and he made Tom believe it, and then he had gone and made up his mind about the rest of their lives without him, trusting him to want this when it was finally offered.

Tom would have been updated in due process.

It was all so Loki; it had all been so fucking  _secret_. For Loki only.

Loki had seen what was behind Tom's eyes when he looked at him. Loki had counted on Tom wanting this. They would start a life together. It would have been new, all of it, theirs… all new, new lives in this new house.

 _Damn_  Loki. Damn Loki for wanting to give up immortality for him after making him believe this meant nothing in the long run.

Damn Loki for being able to have faith in him, in both of them, in the idea of them together, that one mortal life with him would be worth more than immortality without.

Damn Loki for being the one who didn't have to give them up.

Tom leaves the living room. He enters a long hall where doors reveal guest bedrooms and closets, many, enough. There is one room with a lot of light and the beginnings of a row of sockets on the walls. Tom looks and knows that this would have been the place for electronics – Loki wasn’t a fan of them and he is certain the rest of the house would have been lit with natural light and candles and fires, but this, this would have been the place for the television and stereo and computers and anything else that required electricity.

He closes the door.

At the end of the hall, Tom finds the library.

The door opens into an airy room, half an octagon. Most of the walls have been lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves of stained wood. One wall has a huge window framing the lake.

In the library, Tom loses hold of his anger.

He has never been very good at maintaining his emotions.

He stays there for a long time, at the window. He touches the bookshelves, but only once, on the way out.

The bedroom is at the other side of the house.

It has a fireplace. It has windows, several of them.

In the bedroom where they would have slept the fireplace is half-finished and there is an unfinished bed frame.

In the bedroom, Tom weeps.

He's on the ground. He's grasping the frame and he would wrench it if he were strong enough, just to hear the drag of it, a real sound in this silent house.

He listens to himself instead, the hoarseness of his voice, the helplessness of it. He's shaking and he can't stop. He grips the bed.

_A grip. Get a grip. Get a god damn grip._

He quiets his mind, makes himself do it, a command it is suddenly imperative that he follow. The tears are silent, now, wet against the fingers that press to his eyes.

In the bedroom, Tom forgives them both… he forgives them and he _sees_.

_There are books lining the shelves, stuffing them, Shakespeare and biographies and academic journals and volumes of mythology and Harry Potter and the Hunger Games and there is Tolstoy and Kerouac and Tolkien next to authors he cannot decipher in languages he still wishes to learn. There is sturdy broad furniture, much of it the product of Loki's newfound free time, leathers and dark woods and artwork and blankets with warm patchwork to match the warm wood because that is all Tom and Loki wants this to be his house as much as his own._

_In the kitchen Tom sits at the counter-top, highlighting lines on a thick stack of papers with a green marker (more encouraging than orange). On the stereo in the living room – Tom had gotten his way and had the TV and stereo moved where they were supposed to be – a tenor is singing O Soave Fanciulla, because Loki had found his own favourite Midgardian music and as the song comes to an end it flows naturally into a version of Nessun Dorma that makes him shiver every time._

_Loki is slicing peppers for a sauce and there is pasta boiling on the stove and cream simmering. He is excellent with the knife, after Tom had taught him a few basics of Midgardian cooking he had started to try out every recipe he could get his fingers on. The pieces Loki cuts are small and precise. He likes cooking. He likes cooking for them. He likes slicing best, making use of a knife for other things than war._

_The salt and pepper are in the spice rack next to Tom – he still likes working over his scripts in the kitchen best. Loki reaches for them one at a time. When he takes the salt his wrist, bared as his tunic sleeves are rolled up, brushes Tom's arm; Tom smells Loki and food and writes a happy note next to a particularly interesting line. When Loki returns for the pepper his fingertips ghost the small of Tom's back; Tom chews the cap of his marker into further oblivion and leans into him, just for a moment._

_They touch a lot. It might be an unhealthy amount. It's certainly excessive. But after so many years of reining themselves in, here, and on Asgard – oh, even more so on Asgard, of denying the need to touch in public, neither seem to mind the need for reassurance._

_Loki snags the paprika without touching him, though, distracting Tom from the scripts so he can watch Loki, mostly Loki’s ass in Tom’s jeans, cross the kitchen to add spice to the sauce. He seems to be so intent on stirring that Tom is almost done marking out this scene when Loki's arms are suddenly back around him: one hand hooks in on his abdomen and he drapes low over Tom's shoulder and puts something on the counter-top._

_"Dessert~," Loki says, slyly. And Tom smells the sweet scent of the crushed orange before he sees it, leaking fruit mush dangerously close to his paper-stack. Tom caps his marker and draws Loki's arm in around him._

_Loki is doing interesting things with his tongue to Tom's ear and he says, "It was found wedged near the refrigerator. I had not realized I could fuck you and make orange juice at the same time. We will just have to devise a more efficient system in the future."_

_"Multi-tasking is good," Tom agrees, tilting up to look at Loki's mouth. Loki grins and leans to kiss Tom hard, harder even than he kissed him yesterday when they made a wreck of the kitchen, making love against the cabinet and on the counter and by the sink and bruising spilled fruit on the floor._

_"Appetizer," Tom suggests into Loki's kiss._

_And Loki grins broader and pulls him down and forgives Tom and Tom's mouth and Tom's cock for the cream sauce singeing, the pasta boiling over. One pot is burned nearly beyond recognition, but they forget to mind._

In the bedroom, Tom is made to see.

_...how..._

_Loki?_

The room is silent save for Tom's breathing. Tom is breathing by the bed frame, shaking.

In the grip of his imagination. In the grip of  _something_.

He wouldn't have...

...couldn't have seen them like that. Hadn't been letting himself think that far, that far into impossibility.

Wouldn't have...wouldn't have let himself see what they could have been.

_Loki._

Stranger things have happened. They have.

"Thank you," Tom says to the windows and the wood.

In the bedroom, Tom has finally figured it out.

There had been no time, no breath. Loki couldn't have told Tom that he loved him. Couldn't, not as he died on display before all of Asgard. Not when it had never been said. No time to tell Tom what went with the words, to tell him about the truths in them.

It would not have been enough.

Tom would have wondered, and he would have questioned. And he would have hurt and wept and raged, for a very long time. There would have been no answers. He would have had Ferguson sell Glen Cannich with the rest of the property; no reason to come here, no reason to care. He would have had too much to grapple with, the mystery of Loki's will, so much left without explanation. He would have made himself crazy with guilt and self-doubt, sick with not  _knowing_.

Now he knows.

 _Glen Cannich._  The only thing that Loki could say to Tom. His solace.  _This_ , all of this, the promise of them, the last thought he thought.

Loki had smiled, thinking, dying.

More than love. Love could be simple and commonplace and easy and that was not how it had been for them and it would not have been enough.

He had given Tom everything he had, all that he would be, in hidden transaction, kept locked in future trust.

Glen Cannich. Everything he hadn't told him.

Everything that mattered.

Tom pushes himself up, up and away from the frame.

He leaves the bedroom.

In the living room again he sees the passage that leads to the kitchen, the door out to the backyard, where the porch winds down to the dock, the lake, the trees.

Tom doesn't go to look, he’s seen enough… he understands.

He stands in the living room, where the skylight is letting in a fainter sun, where he pauses, wiping the anger from his mouth, the grief from his eyes.

Around him, the wood settles. The world settles. The silence is heavy, now. The house is empty.

"Loki," Tom says. He says "Loki," when there is no more sound, when the name feels right and necessary to fill the silent space. "You were right, Peach. We would have been happy here."

He goes out the door, closing it soundly behind him, walking too fast to hear the  _click_. Outside, the day has blossomed. Outside, the sun is high. Spring has come to Glen Cannich.

On the lawn, on the green grass, Joey Butler is nailing a "For Sale" sign, driving it deep down into the earth, but Tom doesn't turn to look as he moves past.


End file.
